Amanda Carpenter: Let the Media Dinosaurs Die
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How does Amanda Carpenter view the current media landscape?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Friday. Delighted to welcome back our former friend. She's now a writer and editor at projectdemocracy.org, which is pretty important. And this week she was a guest host on The View. It's all caps, Amanda Carpenter. What's up, Amanda?
Wait, hold on. Former friend?
Well, is that what I said?
You said former friend. Wow, that's a demotion. Like, you guys have best friends, you have all kinds of things, and I'm former friend.
Current friend, former colleague.
What insights does Amanda Carpenter share about her experience on The View?
Close ally. Partner in crime. Whatever you want to say. You were on The View this week. Can I indulge you for a second in the audience with something? You were replacing Alyssa Farah.
I was filling in. Let's be clear. I was a guest for three days. But yeah, it's your show, dude.
You're filling in for Alyssa Farah. Had a new baby, Justin. Congrats to her. And Alyssa, you know, look, Alyssa worked for Mike Pence. Alyssa was in there in Trump 1.0.
Why is Trump’s influence significant in today's media mergers?
So fair skepticism about Alyssa sometimes from people. And let me tell you, that fair skepticism extended to me. When I was writing Why We Did It, I was trying to analyze the psychology of people who knew better but went along with Trump anyway. So it's kind of hard to pick representative people because I didn't want to do a Mean Girls Burn book, you know, where I was just like slaying random people and like just choosing based on like past slights from campaigns of yore. And so what I decided to do was choose the group that did the autopsy with me. Because me and one other woman were basically the only people that didn't go along with Trump, the core autopsy group. But the problem was like none of those people like really fit one archetype.
And so I needed somebody else to offer to participate. And I called around to different people. And I didn't know this at all. I'd never met her. And we met in secret. It was very furtive. You know, she was nervous. Like an ally?
How are independent outlets like The Bulwark changing the media space?
You don't want to be seen with me. With you? She didn't want to be seen with you? She didn't want to be seen with me. Well, right, because, you know, she's still in a transition period, right? When was this? This was like right after she had quit.
Okay.
It was right after January 6th. She was like, do I still want to work in Republican politics? Do I just want to burn it down? Do I want to go be a shepherd? She didn't know.
She's going through it.
We're keeping optionality.
What challenges do states face in combating ICE and election meddling?
Meeting in a random hotel in secret. We start talking. We vibed out. We both had the Lebanese thing going. My impression of her was that... Initially, was that like, maybe she got over her skis. It's kind of fake. I don't know. Anyway, I started interviewing her. We met once. We met twice. We met a third time. Go to her house in Georgetown. And we went for hours. And we're just talking, drinking wine.
What are the implications of DHS's surveillance practices?
And the thing we kept going back and forth on, which was like the whole point of the book, was like, why did you go in and why did you quit? Those are the questions we're trying to answer. Why did you really do it? Not like the lip service reason that you said. At a deep level, why did you do it?
So you got her all liquored up.
So we got her all liquored up, right. And at the time, she doesn't have a kid. And they're trying to have a kid, but they're struggling to get through the whole IVF thing. She's talked about this. And... She just gets very emotional and starts talking about her dad had just had a stroke and her dad was like a MAGA. A pre-MAGA, a proto-MAGA media.
Well, was it World Net Daily? It was one of the wild ones.
How do personal experiences shape political beliefs and actions?
And of all the ones, you know, I worked at human events. That was wild for me. Like they were all in on the birther stuff, as I recall.
Yeah, correct. So her dad was really out there.
Yeah, big time.
And she starts to get kind of, he just had a stroke. It starts to get emotional. She says this to me. She was like, since that I've been thinking about mortality and legacy and marrying into a family where I'm so proud of who they are. thinking about my dad and what he could have been. I don't care about money or different things, but I want my kids and grandkids to look back and be like, she was someone who did the right thing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How does Amanda Carpenter view the current media landscape?
0:13–0:43
2
What insights does Amanda Carpenter share about her experience on The View?
0:43–1:12
3
Why is Trump’s influence significant in today's media mergers?
1:12–2:09
4
How are independent outlets like The Bulwark changing the media space?
2:09–2:34
5
What challenges do states face in combating ICE and election meddling?
2:34–3:01
6
What are the implications of DHS's surveillance practices?
3:01–3:44
7
How do personal experiences shape political beliefs and actions?
3:44–4:24
8
What future trends do Amanda and Tim see in media and politics?
4:24–58:15
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Bulwark Daily
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